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  1. Lefter 14 ~ Mount Albert may be safe. Auckland no.

    May 21, 2009 by emweb

    You might think the AK Super City idea is a good one. And it may have been, the way the Royal Commission recommended. But National, in its railroading process, appears to have dispensed with most of the better ideas that would have made a super city good for Aucklanders.

    Why is National so damn keen to have an Auckland Super City, you may ask? Think about it – over a million people all safely in the clutches of right-wing, National-supporting toady, John Banks ‘SuperMayor’. No more painful Bob Harvey gibes (go Bob!) or Mangere success stories for National to contend with. National only likes Remuera success stories, you see.

    And you don’t get to vote on the Super City. How does that make you feel?

    After a week of classic faux pas over the motorway extension, we were treated to the bizarre spectacle of a glowing John Key looking almost post coitally smug. Why? Because President Barack Obama had deigned to speak to him on the phone.

    Was I the only one fighting down nausea?

    But I feel like writing a thank you letter to Key all the same. Because he handed us the precious gift of Melissa Lee as a ‘candidate’ for Mount Albert. What a turkey! Who in National thought that just putting an attractive right-winger forward over the hard-working National incumbent in the always Labour electorate was a good idea?

    What a howler. Excellent.

    And I commented a while ago that Labour had better not lose this electorate, and that Phil Goff should step up and sort it out. To his credit, he did so. While I commiserate with MP Phil Twyford, who lives in the Mt Albert electorate and wanted to run as Labour’s representative, I am relieved that we no longer have the spectre of Judith Tizard looming over us. I am looking forward to a much better outcome as a result: Labour retaining Mount Albert (if Shearer can just get his interview nerves sorted out). Plus a rosy possible future that has Phil Twyford representing Auckland Central instead. I find this an extremely welcome idea.

    Frankly, the fact Ak Central went to Nikki Kaye in the last election was a crime. What the hell were you thinking, Central Aucklanders? How is she even a politician? (I know, I know: she wasn’t Judith Tizard.)

    However, the thought of a soon-to-be-still Labour Mount Albert kind of pails into insignificance when you consider it will most likely be subsumed under the right wing umbrella held up by the awesomely crass figure that is John Banks.

    Well, most of you voted National last election, so I feel like saying ‘suck it up, losers!’.

    Unfortunately, I live in Auckland.

    Category Commentary, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments

  2. Lefter 13 ~ Representation

    May 10, 2009 by emweb

    Who do they serve?

    According to Statistics New Zealand, the working age population of New Zealand was 3,229,200 (in the year ending March 2007). Of those, 2,126,200 were employed.

    We’re supposed to be a nation of small businesses, as I said in Lefter 12 (The King of Bongo, below), but 53% of new small-to-medium NZ businesses fail in the first three years, according to a Westpac survey.

    Westpac’s analysts put it down to poor financial literacy (this was in 2003). Yes, exactly. I’d add ‘crap management skills’ to that indictment. Anyway … the National Party traditionally appeals to, and finds support from, business people, and from those running small businesses, including those in the farming sector.

    But how many people is that? In 2006, 1,511,250 New Zealanders (so around one-and-a-half million) were in paid employment – ie, they were employees. Another 234,954 were self-employed and without employees while 142,881 were officially listed as employers.

    In other words, about 76% of the listed workforce consists of people working for others. So going by this very crude calculation, National’s policies traditionally represent about 24% of the NZ workforce.

    Of course, more than 24% of the electorate voted them into power.

    Another way of looking at things would be to look at who got tax breaks. National appealed to New Zealanders’ greed with the promise of tax breaks with the implication – lapped up, sadly – that Labour was holding back from passing on their just rewards. Assuming that we’d rather have $10 bucks to spend at the Warehouse but don’t need a government-built road to take us there, perhaps.

    So when National passed on those ‘just rewards’, the tax breaks only went to those earning over $44,000 per year.

    Well, according to payscale.com, an average NZ office administrator earns $37,900, a graphic artist/designer $40,622 and a Personal Assistant squeaks over at 44,069. But if you’re about to go onto a nine day fortnight or a four-day week … goodbye, tax break.

    Last November, the salaries of MPs, ministers and the prime minister were raised by between 4% to 4.8%, by the way. So cherish the luxury of workers being able to grant themselves their own pay rises while they rule over a country going ever deeper into recession. Of course, that luxury goes only to those holding the reins of power, and of the economy, I’m afraid. Including certain board members whose callous disregard for the well being of others has placed them in positions of financial power.

    Great, though – the average wage has been increased to $12.50 an hour. Hoorah. That’s $26,000 a year for 52 x 40-hour weeks. For 60-hour weeks (not uncommon), that’s $39,000. No tax break for you, hard worker.

    Note that the average hourly earnings are much higher than this minimum wage, at $24.33 per hour. That’s a tidy $47,443.50 a year for a common 37.5-hour week, which squeaks over the tax break line, but the average figures are skewed by all those mega-earners out there who are firing people like crazy to protect their own privileged positions. Not to mention rising unemployment; it’s up 2% over the last three months. Not to mention those high earners also got much bigger tax breaks from National.

    Does your government represent you?

    Category Commentary, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: ,,,, | 1 Comment

  3. Lefter 12 ~ The King of Bongo

    April 14, 2009 by emweb

    The King of Bongo

    NZ is supposed to be the nation of small businesses. If it is, you’d think they’d be better run. I’m sure some are, but I’m also sure, from experience, that a hell of a lot of them aren’t – and when they make it big, these companies often just carry on regardless with bad practice embedded into their structures.

    Typically, a person will have an idea and cast about for people to help put it into action. Let’s call him ‘Mr King’ (this is an imaginary person), and his company is called  ‘Bongo’ (an imaginary entity). All well and good normally, but in a recession Mr King finds people so eager to get jobs. They’ll bend over backwards to make his idea work.

    The entrepreneur works hard too, and all is difficult, with anxiety and long hours, but all involved can see it’s going somewhere.

    The company grows, and the original worker is still on the same wage, despite hard hours and low pay. She is mystified to discover other people are getting hired at premium rates as the company grows. She is expected to fight for better conditions. At this point she’s taken for granted. Part of the furniture. So at this point she either gets a grudging pay rise, or leaves, a sour taste in her mouth.

    If she stays, she finds she gets listened to less and less. This is because the entrepreneur’s idea is still going strong. Growth stemming from that original hard work and income flow has gone up considerably.

    But the entrepreneur has never had any management training and doesn’t know how to run things. Mr King even starts to think he’s some kind of genius. (He’s really not.) But there’s no consistent analysis, no understanding of work flow, profits/costs understanding, or proper allocation of resources … everything’s still ad hoc the way it was when the great plan started out.

    Mr King is now sitting on the top of his little self-created pyramid, isolated further and further away from the mechanics of the business but feeling pretty pleased with himself. Some of the later arrivals are adept at siphoning money off for themselves for little work, but they’re between the workers and the entrepreneur so he doesn’t know what’s going on. The workers are critical as they’re well aware of what’s going on, but no one listens to them anyway.

    The dichotomy between types of employment has become really clear. Six people sitting in a room making stuff is one thing – someone selling is another. With a salesperson, you can see, on bank statements, exactly what they are achieving and how you’re profiting from their efforts. The workers making stuff have none of this knowledge and it’s not quantifiable, to this entrepreneur, what their production is worth. That’s once again due to lack of management skill or training. And suggesting they need this training is seen as another attack. The producers don’t know what their efforts are worth either – indeed, if such knowledge exists, it’s kept from them.

    Meantime the sales people and the entrepreneur are showing off more and more signs of wealth.

    The workers aren’t in the union. The union’s not interested anyway, as the place is too small. Besides, the workers are actively discouraged from having anything to do with unions, and they don’t know what they’re being paid in relation even to the people in the same jobs. In staff meetings, nobody says anything because they’re all scared for they’re jobs. Besides, they know it makes no difference. They’re not listened to, and if they do say anything, it’s perceived as a threat. When you deceive people, you become (justifiably, although for all the wrong reasons) scared of them.

    Now the company has 30 employees. A disproportionate number of these are not actively producing anything. This is because people have convinced the entrepreneur how indispensable they are and he is now well cocooned away from the workers. Mr King only hears – avidly – promises of profits. The entrepreneur is spending more and more time away from the company anyway, on his boat or at his bach, overseas or whatever.

    It’s a recession again. The company, badly run, riven by personality struggles, intransigence, people protecting their positions and lack of acumen and analysis, lets the most valuable staff go. Eventually, it collapses entirely, leaving suppliers in the lurch.

    Mr King of Bongo blames the workers.

    Sound familiar? If not, I’m very pleased. But that’s NZ small to medium business in my experience. And it’s rubbish.

    Category Commentary, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments

  4. Lefter 11 ~ don’t lose Mt Albert!

    March 29, 2009 by emweb

    Mt Albert is a marginal seat because Labour may let the seat slip from its grasp. You would think the Labour stronghold of Mt Albert is anything but marginal. It has been Helen Clark’s seat for years and even though Labour completely collapsed in the last election, Helen Clark held the seat with a strong majority and seems to have maintained the affections of the electorate.

    Great. But if Labour screws this up and lets National get it, Labour’s collapse will be perceived as even more profound.

    It annoyed the crap out of me that Labour fought that last election so badly. Letting National call all the shots just made the conservatives look stronger. Labour was complacent and ineffective in its approach. It was blindingly obvious there was a fight to be had – blindingly obvious to all but those running Labour’s campaign, anyway. In effect.

    Since Labour only just squeaked in at the 2005 election, the party should have realised the impact on any subsequent poll. Refusing to campaign on the considerable achievements of the Labour government over its tenure was, to my mind, plain stupid. Warm fuzzies were called for, the steady hand on the tiller, the fireside chat approach. Instead we got a cynical Cullen carping from the sidelines and party-wide floundering with the recession clearly looming.

    Labour pandered to National’s calling of the shots once again. National’s stupid call for ‘change’ and appeal to personal greed cleverly catering directly to the more facile political sensibilities (or complete lack thereof) of New Zealanders.

    So now we have a bizarre situation where Labour seems unsure how to play out a campaign for the plum seat of Mt Albert because of the Judith Tizard problem. That being, she let a safe seat slip from her grasp largely because she was widely perceived as ineffectual. Worse, she let her place be taken by a put-up job from National; Nicki Kaye is hardly a real politician.

    But if Phil Twyford runs for the Mt Albert seat, Tizard could be in again, this time on the list, which would please no one but her.

    This raises several issues: if Phil Goff stepped up and told Tizard where to get off, and let the poor woman retire with any dignity she has left, Phil Twyford should run for Mt Albert – and Labour should pull out all the stops to win it.

    But why should Phil Twyford run for Mt Albert?

    Because he lives there. It’s already his electorate and he wishes to represent his people. This is both admirable and understandable.

    Twyford has a stellar record and he should be supported within the party. Instead, it seems some hidebound Labourites could see him as a threat, but it’s time all that small-mindedness was ruthlessly dispensed with. Twyford taking, effectively, Helen Clark’s mantle in Mt Albert would be a clear message to the country that Labour isn’t finished, that there’s new blood and that Labour does, in fact, have a bigger vision. (Does it?)

    Anyone politicking away for themselves within Labour now – you’re doing the wrong thing. New Zealand needs Labour back. We need a strong Labour. We need a Labour Party profound in its own values.

    Helen Clark is another factor in all this. She may be a friend of Tizard’s but Clark knows perfectly well what should be done in this case. Clark has been keeping her head down and has now scored a great job she is perfect for. Excellent. I’m happy for her and I think she has the potential to do great good.

    But it’s almost palpable that National can hardly wait till Clark is out of the country. They’re right to be impatient. She seems to be the only prominent figure inside Labour with a clear vision. So I wish she’d deploy it before she disappears.

    My message to you, Ms Clark, is: you’ve had a break. Now do the right thing for the party you led so well. Advise the right people. Set up a Labour win in Mt Albert. Get the Tizard problem dealt with – even if it means Goff gets told to pull his blinkers off.

    Hard decisions have to be made. For God’s sake, someone has to make them. It’s time to move on.

    If you don’t sort this out, you are onto the final series of nails in the coffin. Put those damn hammers away! If Labour falls any further apart … we’re screwed.

    Category Commentary, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments

  5. Lefter 10 ~ a good war

    March 19, 2009 by emweb

    I threatened last post to tell you how New Zealand can prosper through this recession, so here goes. We just need a war.

    Now, this is what I think will happen: instead of NZ trying to trade its way out of this recession, Prime Minister John Key will just follow his experience. Which means he’ll borrow to raise money while pursuing a right-wing agenda of making the lower classes poorer while rewarding his wealthy Pakeha cronies with more access to that wealth. They’ll use that borrowed money to cheaply buy the property and businesses of those driven to the wall. But inevitably, NZ will not be able to pay the borrowings back, leaving Labour to get the country back into the black when they eventually get back in and to resurrect our social services, ACC etc. As usual.

    National’s efforts will expand an increasingly desperate unemployed sector which will work for less and less money and under more onerous conditions. In turn, National will attempt to disenfranchise the unions (or what’s left of them) to maintain the ‘competitive’ employment situation in National’s favour.

    But National is already using this recession as an excuse to push its agenda much faster than planned (National meant originally to get through the first term before doing most of this – but the world recession means this suspension is no longer necessary).

    But National’s efforts are all wrong, They will only benefit a very few New Zealanders – rich people like John Key. (And have you noticed how rich Kiwis tend to move offshore? That’s because once you’ve shit in your own nest, you want a new nest far away from the smell.)

    What we actually need is a war.

    Now, don’t dismiss my war plan as crazy. It really isn’t. Apart from all the killing, maiming, violence and destruction, anyway.

    Wars have got countries out of bad economic conditions before. New Zealand was already leaving the Great Depression behind in the 1930s but it still entered World War Two as a semi-industrialised nation with about half horse-driven agriculture. It emerged as an industrialised nation with a virtually 100% mechanised agri-sector.

    Dare I mention Germany? Hitler used mechanisation and mass arming to pull Germany out of its terrible Depression-era situation in the 1930s. There are many other examples.

    We could declare war on someone, of course – say on the island nation of Fe’ausi. They wouldn’t put up much of a fight, and I’m sure NZ’s military leaders could spin things out so nothing actually happens …  particularly since that nation is imaginary. But that’s hardly necessary.

    The salient fact of a war is what it does to the economy, and what it does to the population.

    What it does to the economy is, it requires the government to spend all its resources on its country – producing food, clothing and industrial output solely for the country’s citizens to get them through this crisis.

    What it does to the population is, while it internalises the economy, it externalises people’s concerns. In other words, the population looks outside New Zealand for threats instead of inside. The people unify against this threat, so they work together, sacrifice and make common cause for the common good. They help each other and do the hard yards.

    People will head out into the fields to grow food at fair prices for New Zealanders, undertake training to help us create goods for New Zealanders and for overseas revenue, and employers (some, anyway) will stop ripping off their workers for their own pockets. But if they don’t, they can be publicly pilloried.

    But don’t worry – we don’t need an actual war to achieve New Zealand’s salvation. President Kennedy, for instance, used warlike rhetoric to instigate the Peace Corp, established by Executive Order in 1961. The purpose of the Peace Corps was “to promote world peace and friendship through a Peace Corps, which shall make available to interested countries and areas men and women of the United States qualified for service abroad and willing to serve, under conditions of hardship if necessary, to help the peoples of such countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower.” It sounds like a war, doesn’t it? The raising of a regiment or militia for overseas service. I met some of these guys in Bangladesh in the 1960s and they were fantastic.

    New Zealand needs to declare war on this recession. It needs to raise a corps of New Zealanders working for New Zealanders to get us out of this financial strife.

    But until then, I predict Key and his bigots are going to try and run New Zealand into the ground. They might succeed. Then they’ll move out and live in their offshore palaces.

    Category Commentary, Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: | 1 Comment

  6. Lefter 8 ~ National’s expando-foam big bore politics

    February 25, 2009 by emweb

    Remember the person in the South Island squirting expanding foam into large-bore car exhausts? If you block a car’s exhaust, the car won’t go. The expanding builders’ foam was particularly clever. It starts out as a stream of chemically smelly stuff, then expands and hardens into a major, hard-to-shift blockage.

    That reminds me of National. The party is everywhere. John Key and his minions appear on TV every night, in the paper every day, and on the radio continuously.

    Saying what? Very little. They’re just busy filling the vacuum left by Labour’s collapse in the last election.

    This is clever. They are expanding to fill the void, becoming a kind of ersatz, temporary über Labour. The soft-spined swing voters pat themselves on their backs, because things didn’t ‘change’ all that much after all. The right wingers pat themselves on the back too – well, National may not be doing anything destructive to workers yet, but hey, at least it’s National. Right?

    The left wingers – reduced to being left whingers like me – well, we just gnash our teeth powerlessly because we know what’s coming. National faces are everywhere, always talking, smiling those ghastly penguin smiles, saying much, doing very little. They’re expanding into a big hard block taking up all the space where Labour used to be. That big block will solidify, filling all the space up, hardening into the great big right wing bloc that will, if all ends badly, follow the true agenda of the National Party. This will happen in the second term.

    How Tim Grosser’s words on National Radio still ring in my ears: “… with the centrist position this party is taking for this election”.

    Kim Hill, conducting the debate, did not even pick up on it.

    What is the position of the National Party? Keep a percentage unemployed to give employers leverage – that’s your life and livelihood, that leverage. A little desperation keeps business owners’ coffers full, lets them play hard ball with anyone they don’t like, and lets them drive down wages in a ‘competitive’ labour market. That’s ordinary people desperately trying to get jobs, that ‘competitive labour market’.

    The worst thing is, this recession is playing right into National’s hands. The unemployment rates are going up and no one can even blame them. They’ll just say ‘it was the recession!’ and let them settle to their preferred ratio of about 4 per cent.

    It makes me sick. Wait and see.

    Category Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: | No Comments

  7. Lefter 7 ~ fear

    January 21, 2009 by emweb

    What are you afraid of? It strikes me that wealthy people have an inordinate fear of other people and are incredibly over protective of their misbegotten gains. 

    I live in an area in Auckland that used to be a humming hotbed of racial intermix, a favoured abode of musicians, hippies, lefties, poets and writers. 

    Used to be. 

    Now that it’s considered desirable – in many ways thanks to the community efforts and creativity of those aforementioned dwellers – it’s becoming a white suburb in which wealthy people move in and rebuild the once working-class medium-sized bungalows and villas into multi-storied mansions, almost inevitably with big ‘f__k-off’ gates in the new high walls surrounding them. 

    Since wealth is tied to the right, and as I have mentioned before, the right seems to rely on fear and loathing to build solidarity, I guess this makes sense.

    But what are they afraid of, actually? If a person is robbed, it’s bad. No one enjoys being robbed. But rich people can not only, presumably, afford to replace items much more easily, they inevitably have really good insurance policies as well. 

    So it must be more than fear of basic theft. It must be related to sense of self, and self worth.

    A bizarre thing happened a couple of weeks ago which brought this phenomenon more to my attention. I went to a little bay near Takapuna for a swim, driving the little old family car with two teenagers in it, plus my partner. As I turned into the street leading to the beach, one lined with extremely expensive big houses, I noticed a new VW Beetle following us. There were no parking places left so I went down to the end of the cul-de-sac and, OK a little naughty I guess, double-parked while everyone jumped out. This was a speedy process. I would meet them at the beach after parking the car. 

    I heard a toot and looked up and the VW was aimed amidships of our car, engine idling. 

    “Just be a moment, sorry!” I yelled out. I waited a few more seconds so my family could grab their towels and what not and prepared to drive off.

    But this guy wasn’t having any of it. 

    He jumped out of the passenger side of the Beetle (a woman was driving) and yelled “M-a-t-e” (which I most certainly was not), “It’s my driveway.”

    “I know,” I said pleasantly enough, “I’m just going”. 

    “It’s not good enough, it’s my driveway,” he wheedled.

    My partner, always positive, said something like “Relax, it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? We’re just going.”

    But he made an angry retort. So did I. Anyway, I drove off, shaking my head in disbelief, and parked around the corner. As I walked back, I noticed this guy stalking about with a pad and pen writing down the number plates of every car he thought infringed his, or someone else’s, property in some way. How galling it must have been that part of his driveway formed a portion of the public access to the beach – but he must have known that when he moved in and rebuilt his fortress, surely?

    For the amazing thing is (he scurried off when he saw me coming) I saw that he lived in an absolute stone-block-constructed several-storey mansion with amazing views out to Rangitoto, fronting the black rocks by the cute little beach. It was surrounded by a high block wall and every few metres there was a sign stating that trespassers would be prosecuted and the house and environs was under constant surveillance. It was more like a castle than a house. 

    Nice life, huh? What an idiot. 

    My daughter thinks it’s guilt at having what you shouldn’t have.

    Category Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: , | No Comments

  8. Lefter 6: right and left

    December 29, 2008 by emweb

    When I have discussions of left and right – not that I do very often in New Zealand, where political discussion is not favoured – some like to say that you can’t boil fundamental ideologies down. I think this argument is facile. Of course you can. It’s the detail that leads to all those arguments that the left traditionally overindulges in to dash itself to bits against the hard shore of daily reality. 

    But if you grasp a basic understanding of what left is, and what right is, it should inform you how to live your life. And who to vote for.

    I am not a strong supporter of the Labour Party. I’m certainly not a member. Labour is far too centrist for me. The Greens have the right idea – ‘we shouldn’t shit in our nest’, basically. But is it a left wing party? I’m not so sure. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

    I often vote Labour (and sometimes Green). I would prefer that the left wing view prevails for the good of the people of New Zealand (and not just for the good of the wealthy, for whom I have no patience).

    As I said in my second blog “the left puts people first, the right puts money first”.

    Consider this statement: “To a great extent the left over-identifies with the other as a victim, which locks it into a hierarchy of suffering whereby the wretched can do little wrong. To a much greater extent the right disidentifies to build political solidarity through fantasmic fear and loathing. Faced with this impasse, critical distance might not be such a bad idea after all.”

    [from The Return of the Real, p203 by Hal Foster, published 1996 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology]

    This book discusses art and theory and the quote appears in a chapter on the Western world and the other world. I think it’s a pretty good summation, too, of broad philosophical and cultural differences between left and right. If you’ve seen Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling for Columbine, the final message is that the governing forces of the US have been fostering fear to maintain position. Fear of ‘the other’. Look at the complete lack of discussion post 9/11 about why on earth somebody would feel they had to carry out those attacks. To spend all that time, money and energy organising them, then carrying them out. From the US perception, it was as if the attacks were carried out simply because ‘terrorists are evil’. This was further propagated by the misidentification of Iraq with Osama Bin Laden. Unfortunately, to most Americans it didn’t matter. Iraqis were ‘other’ anyway. Attack them. 

    How about “critical distance”, though? In the passage quoted above, Foster is talking about art in relation to society. But if you believe either or both of those summations (mine and Foster’s), you start to see daily events in a different light. Underlying motives become more apparent.

    As we head into a year in which the recession looks like it will show its effects more deeply, you might be thinking about what kind of government you would prefer to have in place. 

    What caused this recession was people so eager to have what the Western promise offered, they would borrow far more than was sensible. These loans were vended to them by greedy bankers over-keen to take their money, at any cost. 

    Now, in the environment of worldwide recession, our National government rolls out no tax breaks to those earning under $40,000 per year but progressively higher tax breaks above that to people who earn more. National has modified the life-saving KiwiSaver scheme – potentially life-saving to low income workers who now have savings, and to those who would buy a first home – to pay for those tax breaks for the wealthy.

    If you ever wanted a regime that fosters the division between the wealthy and the poor, this is it – National is consigning lower paid workers to penury and unfair competition for dwindling jobs while rewarding those who manage to stay employed in jobs earning over the national average. This would be bad enough if the economy was humming, but to do this now?!

    Is that what you voted for?

    Category Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought | Tags: | 2 Comments

  9. Lefter 5 ~ Politically Correct

    December 10, 2008 by emweb

    Bizarrely, as I write this, two young men with swastika tattoos are washing the house. The house washing people didn’t say anything about neo-Nazi operators. It’s not like the firm was called Himmler Housewash or anything. 

    ‘Politically Correct’ is one of the catch phrases people seemed to love to use to label all sorts of sins of the Left, and of the Labour Party. 

    But what does it mean? 

    Being politically correct means you don’t act on racist, sexist, or homophobic assumptions – or that you try not to, assuming you’re aware of these tendencies in yourself. You live and let live. You don’t promote racist or sexist acts. You try and be mindful of the rights of others and to treat people as your equals. 

    What on earth is wrong with that? Every major philosophy and religion in the world says essentially the same thing.

    You have to wonder if those who rail loudest against ‘the PC brigade’ are the worst recidivists of racism and sexism. It’s easy to assume they hate the strictures of being politically correct because it’s the antithesis of their real beliefs. And if their real beliefs are the antithesis of being PC, you probably won’t want much to do with them as they are not rational, reliable human beings. 

    When people ask me, with a withering tone, if I’m politically correct, I say ‘Yes, I am.’ Then I ask them ‘What’s wrong with that, exactly?’ It pays to challenge people on these statements as, unfortunately, you’ll discover they don’t often know what they mean. They just like the easy put-down. But it’s time to pull the rug out from under their feet, especially as National sets about dismantling the structures that attempt to keep our society decent and fair. 

    So explain what it means, then ask them to explain what is so wrong with treating people with respect. Be proud to be politically correct.

    Category Left, New Zealand, Politics, Thought, Uncategorized | Tags: ,,,,,, | No Comments

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